Check out these three concepts for future books from IDEO, a design group. My favorite is “Alice”… what’s yours?
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simoncan 
I gotta definitely go with “Alice” too. That sounds very cool and might even make me want to switch to e-books when I’m no on planes. The other two definitely got cool points but they weren’t really as relevant to me as an avid reader. “Alice” seems to be like those choose your own adventure books to the 10th power. I loved those as a kid:)
My favorite is Alice. I like the idea of doing little tasks to unlock special book features. I also loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books! I’m considering switching to a Kindle but things like this make me want to wait for a bit to see how quickly the technology progresses.
Very cool. I was fascinated to watch this short clip and discover a bit more of what “digital reading” is all about. I’m kinda partial to “Alice” as well, although I suppose it depends on what kind of content I’m reading. Clearly, it seems that “Alice” is more geared toward fiction, whereas the “Nelson” module seemed as if it might be more appropriate for certain types of nonfiction, academia, scholarly literature, etc. It was almost frightening, in a way, the functionality that the “Nelson” module seemed to have. As to the third one, “Coupland” (sp?), I’m not sure whether that is something I’d really enjoy or not. I guess that I’d have to put that one as a distant third on my list. Thanks for posting the video link, Simon!
Overall, I can see good and bad with this technology. While I think the features are certainly cool, it’s a bit concerning all these designs replace very basic functions. I can ask a colleague at work what they are reading. Also, half the fun of reading is imagining a character’s “back story.” In my view, the designs would actually displace my imagination. They could also limit a very common piece of conversation. That being said, the products might actually help you reach people you share interests with but would never meet on a daily basis. Some of the designs look like they could bring you deeper into the story line. I guess I’d have to give them a test run to see which one I liked best.